Harry Smiled
by Evergreen 360
Summary: OneShot. Harry is tired. Ginny is worried. He's doing too much and not enough at the same time. He needs to stop being The Boy Who Lived, and just be Harry, a nineteen-year-old boy with a girlfriend who loves him, and the sun on his face.


**Hello, all!  
It's been sunny where I live and I've got really bad summer feels right now, so I've started writing summery little stories about my favorites. This one is Ginny and Harry, and I've got another planned about Ron and Hermione. Yay!  
In addition to my summer feels, I've also got the travel bug _bad_, and that's probably what spawned this particular oneshot...**

**Enjoy!**

**-E**

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"Your balcony doesn't get very much sun, does it?"

"You know you have a massive yard at home that gets tons of sunshine, right? Besides, it was your idea to come out here."

Ginny cracked an eye open and glared sideways at her boyfriend.

"That wasn't very romantic, Harry."

"It wasn't meant to be, Ginny."

She sighed and shifted on the blanket so that the scant rays of sun could warm her bare feet. It was summer in London, which actually didn't mean much weather wise except that the clouds that always blocked the sun were thinner now, and let in a bit more light. But it was summer, nonetheless, and she and Harry had been so busy with their own hectic lives that they had hardly spent any time together. So today, when she stopped by on her way back from visiting her brother in Diagon Alley and he was _actually off work_, she'd jumped at the chance to be with him.

The balcony had been her idea—at the time, the weak sunlight had been at its brightest and had gilded his apartment to look like amber. She'd grabbed the blanket off of his bed, snagged his only bottle of fire whiskey, and dragged him out into the fresh air. As soon as they'd laid down, however, all ideas of conversation and drinking had gone out the window…because _oh_, was she tired.

Now they'd been lying outside for near an hour, and had hardly spoken. Admittedly, it was nice just to feel him beside her, to hear his shallow breathing and know without a doubt, for one of the only moments in her life, that he was safe. But the sun was leaving, ducking behind a dark cloud again, and she felt done relaxing.

She snuck another glance at Harry, with his arm bent behind his head, his glasses pushed up into his mess of black hair, and she frowned a bit. He didn't look relaxed. He looked…wrung out.

Instead of reaching for him as she wanted to, she heaved a dramatic sigh. And then another, because she knew it would get his attention.

Sure enough, he stirred beside her and then he sighed too. She smirked.

"What should I have said, Gin?"

When she opened her eyes this time he was closer than she'd expected him to be, propped up onto one elbow and looking down at her through heavy-lidded green eyes.

"You should have said you'd _warm me up_," she grinned, and his eyebrows shot up behind his fringe. "Or you should have said you'd take me somewhere sunny."

Harry smirked lazily and his eyes drifted down the curve of her body to her hips—he seemed to be thinking about touching her there, where her shirt had ridden up an inch past the waistband of her jeans, but he didn't. She nearly pouted.

"Where?" He asked after a moment. She considered.

"Spain." She rolled onto her side to face him and propped her head up on one hand. "Or…Australia. Hawaii!"

"Greece?" He suggested and she nodded excitedly. They were both grinning now, leaning in close to one another, some kind of energy crackling between them. "Italy…India…"

"Mexico!" they both said at the same time. Ginny giggled and her red hair spilled over her shoulder. Harry's hand tucked it back behind her ear, and she felt sparks when he touched her skin; but when she looked up into his eyes, she recognized something all too familiar in them. Her smile faltered.

"Don't give me that look, Harry; please don't."

"What look?"

She sighed and rolled over onto her back again. "The look that prefaces your, 'oh, Ginny, I'd love to but…' speech. The one that usually ends with: 'but Kingsley needs me!' or 'I can't leave Ron to deal with everything on his own.' 'How would the world keep turning if Harry Potter took a vacation?'" She was practically yelling by the end, but when she looked over at Harry, he was grinning.

Her racing heart skipped a beat as the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and the light danced across his face like gilded lace. Harry was so handsome when he smiled…this time she couldn't resist. She reached out and brushed her thumb along his cheekbone, tucked his hair—it was getting long now—behind his ear, and cupped his face in her hand. His smile grew and her heart fluttered.

It was easy to forget, in the traffic of their busy lives, that he was only a nineteen-year-old boy. But when he smiled like that, when they were alone like this, _she remembered_. He had already saved the world—_twice_—and he'd lived more life than most people three times his age, but when it came down to it, he was still a _boy_. And really, there was so much he hadn't done.

_Take me somewhere sunny_ had been a joke at first, a way for her to tease him into acting like a boyfriend, but now, with the sun and his smile beaming down at her, she _wanted it._ Her face must have changed as her thoughts ran wild, because Harry's smile faltered and his forehead creased with a gentle frown.

He opened his mouth to say something but she leaned forward and kissed him before he could. Ginny had meant it to be chaste, she had, but his lips were warm and tasted like brown sugar…so she let herself kiss him. It had been a while, she realized, since they'd held each other this way—his hands on her hips and her fingers knotted in his hair. Kissing had become less of a priority recently, since most of the time they were too tired when they actually saw each other to do much more than nap. And _Merlin _had she missed it.

Harry had a way of gasping when she kissed him, always gentle as his breath _whooshed_ against her lips, that drove her mad. It was like he was perpetually surprised that _this_ was happening—she'd almost forgotten what that felt like, hadn't realized how much she loved it.

When she finally pulled away, she was draped across him like a blanket and they were both breathing a little harder than normal. He kept his eyes closed as she adjusted herself in his arms, but he was smiling. His cheeks were a bit flushed and his hair was sticking up at wild angles from where her fingers had combed through it, and it all made him look so young…it bothered her that the difference was so noticeable.

"You're starting to look old," she whispered against his shoulder. His chest shook as he laughed.

"Gee, _thanks_."

But she looked up into his eyes, so full of love, and hoped that the look on her face would take the venom out of her words.

"At least, older than you should look." A crease had appeared in his forehead, so she reached up to smooth over it with her finger. She almost touched his scar. "You carry all your worry in your forehead, you know. And you frown too often."

Harry smirked. "Are you going to prescribe an anti-wrinkle potion for me?"

She breathed a laugh and then settled back against his side. Her head found the soft spot on his shoulder, and his hand found her waist. They lay in silence for a minute or two, and then Ginny spoke:

"I don't think you've caught your breath yet, Harry." She could practically hear the reply forming in his head, something about kissing her earlier, but that wasn't what she was talking about, so she pressed on. "You've never…_stopped_. You've been bouncing from trauma to trauma all your life and you've never taken a _break_." His arm tightened around her. "And I want you to."

She suddenly saw Harry, twelve years old, covered in filth and bleeding, clutching his mangled arm to his chest as he hovered over her in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry, always in the hospital wing and _usually_ because he'd risked his life, in some way or another, to save someone else. Harry appearing outside the maze during the Tri-Wizard Tournament, bleeding—again—and sobbing over Cedric Diggory's dead body. Harry teaching a group of students how to protect themselves—risking expulsion and possibly arrest—at only fifteen, because he couldn't let them go undefended. Harry at the bottom of the Astronomy tower the night Dumbledore died—the realization plain on his face that he would have to handle things on his own, now. Harry cradled in Hagrid's arms, limp and lifeless, after risking everything to give his friends a chance to survive Voldemort. And even now, when the war was over and Voldemort was gone, she saw Harry working day in and out to rebuild the Ministry, to strengthen the Auror office, and to put right what Voldemort had tried to destroy—still carrying the world on his shoulders.

Maybe it was his turn to be rebuilt. Maybe it was time for him to live his life, not as The Boy Who Lived, not as The Chosen One…but as Harry.

Tears pricked behind Ginny's eyes and Harry looked alarmed. Before he could ask her what was wrong, however, she rolled back on top of him and smiled through the tears.

"_Let's go_," she said softly. "Take me somewhere sunny where we can relax and kiss and be young and in love. Take me away, Harry Potter."

He looked hesitant, so she kissed him. He still looked hesitant when she pulled away, so she kissed him again. And again. And once more, just because she could.

"I'm sure the world will be in some sort of trouble by the time we get back, so there will be plenty to do upon our return, but for _now_…let's just _go_."

Harry's hands found her hips and his thumb tickled the bare skin beneath the hem of her shirt. Ginny could practically hear the gears turning in his mind and she could see him working things out in his head…so she waited.

She kissed him, on the lips, the collar bone, the chin. She played with the soft hair at the nape of his neck and smiled at him when he looked into her eyes. And she waited.

And then, Harry reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. He pulled her down to kiss him, and when she pulled away, she knew that he was saying yes, though he hadn't said so with words.

Harry smiled.

And she knew.

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**Because Harry deserves a break, don't you think? Review if you liked it-let me know what you think!**

**-E**


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